"My esteemed Herr Doctor, it is too painful a subject. Godlike fabulous Achilles, and the old Greek Kings of men, one perceives, after study, to be dim enough Grazier Sovereigns, 'living among infinite dung,' till their sacred Poet extricated them. And our UNsacred all-desecrating Dryasdust,--Herr Doctor, I must say, it fills me with despair! Authentic human Heroisms, not fabulous a whit, but true to the bone, and by all appearance very much nobler than those of godlike Achilles and pious AEneas ever could have been,--left in this manner, trodden under foot of man and beast; man and beast alike insensible that there is anything but common mud under foot, and grateful to anybody that will assure them there is nothing. Oh, Doctor, oh, Doctor! And the results of it--You need not go exclusively 'to France' to look at them. They are too visible in the so-called 'Social Hierarchies,' and sublime gilt Doggeries, sltcred and secular, of all Modern Countries! Let us be silent, my friend."-- "Prussian Dryasdust," he says elsewhere, "does make a terrible job of it; especially when he attempts to weep through his pipe-clay, or rise with his long ears into the moral sublime. As to the German People, I find that they dimly have not wanted sensibility to Friedrich; that their multitudes of Anecdotes, still circulating among them in print and VIVA VOCE, are proof of this. Thereby they have at least made a MYTH of Friedrich's History, and given some rhythmus, life and cheerful human substantiality to his work and him. Accept these Anecdotes as the Epic THEY could not write of him, but were longing to hear from somebody who could. Who has not yet appeared among mankind, nor will for some time. Alas, my friend, on piercing through the bewildering nimbus of babble, malignity, mendacity, which veils seven-fold the Face of Friedrich from us, and getting to see some glimpses of the Face itself, one is sorrowfully struck dumb once more. What a suicidal set of creatures; commanding as with one voice, That there shall be no Heroism more among them; that all shall be Doggery and Common-place henceforth. 'ACH, MEIN LIEBER SULZER, you don't know that damned brood!'--Well, well. 'Solomon's Temple,' the Moslems say, 'had to be built under the chirping of ten thousand Sparrows.' Ten thousand of them; committee of the whole house, unanimously of the opposite view;--and could not quite hinder it. That too is something!"--